1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a beamforming device for increasing a signal to interference ratio by using a direction-of-arrival estimation-based smart antenna process, and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, in a mobile communication environment, a desired signal and an unwanted interference signal are received. A communication distortion rate by the interference signal is determined by a sum of a power level of the desired signal and power levels of other signals. Accordingly, when the level of the desired signal is much greater than the levels of the respective interference signals and the number of the interference signals is great, communication distortion may be caused since the power levels of the interference signals are increased. Accordingly, it is difficult to regenerate information of the desired signal due to the communication distortion.
To solve the above problem, an array antenna scheme has been developed in wireless communication systems. In particular, since a smart antenna system uses a plurality of array antenna elements, and controls a gain and a phase of signals received by the respective array antenna elements, a base station receives a signal transmitted from a desired user. In addition, a signal noise level by multiple access interference is greatly decreased, and therefor, system performance is improved, and channel capacity of the base station is increased.
Further, to eliminate the interference signal in an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system, the entire antenna array is formed by two sub-arrays that are spaced sufficiently apart from each other, so that spatial diversity may be obtained. Then, an adaptive beamforming operation is performed for the respective sub-arrays, and the spatial diversity is obtained by using a maximal ratio combining.
However, in the above method, since a Direction Of Arrival (DOA) of a signal is estimated after the respective antenna elements perform coherent demodulation, when the base station receives the desired signal from various angles due to neighboring obstacles, it is difficult to separate the DOAs from various paths, and angular diversity may not be obtained. In addition, it is difficult to identify the desired signal and the interference signal by the base station, and it is difficult to combine the signals received from the various angles.
In another conventional method for eliminating an interference signal, a reference signal is transmitted in every subcarrier at a predetermined signal level to obtain a signal steering vector, steering vectors are generated for respective subcarriers to generate an optimum steering vector for every subcarrier, and therefore, an adaptive beam for a transmission signal may be formed. It is not required to estimate the DOA of the signal since the steering vector is estimated by transmitting the reference signal in every subcarrier, and therefore, a system is simplified, and a signal identification process is not required.
However, in the above method, since the reference signal is transmitted in every subcarrier, it takes a long time to estimate a covariance matrix of the received signal. In addition, in a Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) system, since center frequencies of transmission/reception signals are different from each other, the FDD system is not used to form the adaptive beam.
The above information is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention, and therefore it may contain information that does not form prior art that is already known to one of ordinary skill in the art.